Why Do Oreos Never Come Apart Evenly?: MIT Researchers Build an “Oreometer” to Find the Answer

in Food & Drink, Science | April 27th, 2022

Despite hav­ing been around for well over a cen­tu­ry, the Oreo cook­ie has man­aged to retain cer­tain mys­ter­ies. Why, for exam­ple, does it nev­er come apart even­ly? Though dif­fer­ent Oreo-eaters pre­fer dif­fer­ent meth­ods of Oreo-eat­ing, an espe­cial­ly pop­u­lar approach to the world’s most pop­u­lar cook­ie involves twist­ing it open before con­sump­tion. That action pro­duces two sep­a­rate choco­late wafers, but as even kinder­garten­ers know from long and frus­trat­ing expe­ri­ence, the crème fill­ing sticks only to one side. It seems that no man­u­al tech­nique, no mat­ter how advanced, can split the con­tents of an Oreo close to even­ly, and only recent­ly have a team of researchers at the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy sought an expla­na­tion.

This endeav­or neces­si­tat­ed an inves­ti­ga­tion of the Ore­o’s rhe­ol­o­gy — the study of the flow of mat­ter, espe­cial­ly liq­uids but also “soft solids” like crème fill­ing. Like all sci­en­tif­ic research, it involved inten­sive exper­i­men­ta­tion, and even the inven­tion of a new mea­sure­ment device: in this case, a sim­ple 3D-print­able “Ore­ome­ter” (seen in ani­mat­ed action above) that uses pen­nies and rub­ber bands.

With it the researchers applied “applied vary­ing degrees of torque and angu­lar rota­tion, not­ing the val­ues that suc­cess­ful­ly twist­ed each cook­ie apart,” writes MIT News’ Jen­nifer Chu. “In all, the team went through about 20 box­es of Ore­os, includ­ing reg­u­lar, Dou­ble Stuf, and Mega Stuf lev­els of fill­ing, and reg­u­lar, dark choco­late, and ‘gold­en’ wafer fla­vors. Sur­pris­ing­ly, they found that no mat­ter the amount of cream fill­ing or fla­vor, the cream almost always sep­a­rat­ed onto one wafer.”

Crys­tal Owens, a mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing PhD can­di­date work­ing on this project, puts this down in large part to how Ore­os are made. “Videos of the man­u­fac­tur­ing process show that they put the first wafer down, then dis­pense a ball of cream onto that wafer before putting the sec­ond wafer on top. Appar­ent­ly that lit­tle time delay may make the cream stick bet­ter to the first wafer.” But oth­er phys­i­cal fac­tors also bear on the phe­nom­e­non as well, as doc­u­ment­ed in the paper Owens and her col­lab­o­ra­tors pub­lished ear­li­er this year in the jour­nal Physics of Flu­id. “We intro­duce Ore­ol­o­gy (/ɔriːˈɒlədʒi/), from the Nabis­co Oreo for “cook­ie” and the Greek rheo logia for ‘flow study,’ as the study of the flow and frac­ture of sand­wich cook­ies,” they write in its abstract. For a sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly inclined young­ster, one could hard­ly imag­ine a more com­pelling field.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Sci­ence & Cook­ing: Harvard’s Free Course on Mak­ing Cakes, Pael­la & Oth­er Deli­cious Food

Nor­man Rockwell’s Type­writ­ten Recipe for His Favorite Oat­meal Cook­ies

Dessert Recipes of Icon­ic Thinkers: Emi­ly Dickinson’s Coconut Cake, George Orwell’s Christ­mas Pud­ding, Alice B. Tok­las’ Hashish Fudge & More

Mak­ing Choco­late the Tra­di­tion­al Way, From Bean to Bar: A Short French Film

MIT Researchers 3D Print a Bridge Imag­ined by Leonar­do da Vin­ci in 1502— and Prove That It Actu­al­ly Works

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Frank Lloyd Wright: America’s Greatest Architect? –A Free Streaming Documentary

in Architecture, Film | April 27th, 2022

From Time­line comes a free stream­ing doc­u­men­tary called Frank Lloyd Wright: Amer­i­ca’s Great­est Archi­tect?: 

Frank Lloyd Wright is Amer­i­ca’s great­est ever archi­tect. But few peo­ple know about the Welsh roots that shaped his life and world-famous build­ings. Now, lead­ing Welsh archi­tect Jonathan Adams sets off across Amer­i­ca to explore Frank Lloyd Wright’s mas­ter­pieces for him­self. Along the way, he uncov­ers the tem­pes­tu­ous life sto­ry of the man behind them, and the secrets of his rad­i­cal Welsh back­ground . In a career span­ning sev­en decades, Frank Lloyd Wright built over 500 build­ings, and changed the face of mod­ern archi­tec­ture.

Frank Lloyd Wright: Amer­i­ca’s Great­est Archi­tect? will be added to our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent

How Frank Lloyd Wright’s Son Invent­ed Lin­coln Logs, “America’s Nation­al Toy” (1916)

12 Famous Frank Lloyd Wright Hous­es Offer Vir­tu­al Tours: Hol­ly­hock House, Tal­iesin West, Falling­wa­ter & More

Frank Lloyd Wright Cre­ates a List of the 10 Traits Every Aspir­ing Artist Needs

Frank Lloyd Wright Reflects on Cre­ativ­i­ty, Nature and Reli­gion in Rare 1957 Audio

The Mod­ernist Gas Sta­tions of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe

The Frank Lloyd Wright Lego Set

A is for Archi­tec­ture: 1960 Doc­u­men­tary on Why We Build, from the Ancient Greeks to Mod­ern Times

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Stunningly Elaborate Ottoman Calligraphy Drawn on Dried Leaves

in Art, History | April 26th, 2022


The study of Islam­ic cal­lig­ra­phy is “almost inex­haustible,” begins Ger­man-born Har­vard pro­fes­sor Annemarie Schim­mel’s Cal­lig­ra­phy and Islam­ic Cul­ture, “giv­en the var­i­ous types of Ara­bic script and the exten­sion of Islam­ic cul­ture” through­out the Ara­bi­an Penin­su­la, Per­sia, Africa, and the Ottoman Empire. The first cal­li­graph­ic script, called Ḥijāzī, alleged­ly orig­i­nat­ed in the Hijaz region, birth­place of the Prophet Muham­mad him­self. Anoth­er ver­sion called Kūfī, “one of the ear­li­est extant Islam­ic scripts,” devel­oped and flour­ished in the “Abbasid Bagh­dad,” Anchi Hoh writes for the Library of Con­gress, “a major cen­ter of cul­ture and learn­ing dur­ing the clas­si­cal Islam­ic age.”

Despite the long and ven­er­a­ble his­to­ry of cal­lig­ra­phy around the Islam­ic world, there is good rea­son for the say­ing that the Qur’an was “revealed in Mec­ca, recit­ed in Egypt, and writ­ten in Istan­bul.” The Ottomans refined Ara­bic cal­lig­ra­phy to its high­est degree, bring­ing the art into a “gold­en age… unknown since the Abbasid era,” Hoh writes.

“Ottoman cal­lig­ra­phers adopt­ed [mas­ter Abbasid cal­lig­ra­ph­er] Ibn Muqlah’s six styles and ele­vat­ed them to new peaks of beau­ty and ele­gance.” One of the peaks of this refine­ment can be seen here in these del­i­cate­ly pre­served dead leaves cov­ered with gold­en Ara­bic script.

This par­tic­u­lar appli­ca­tion of the art is, need­less to say, “dif­fi­cult and del­i­cate work,” say the notes on one such leaf in Sin­ga­pore’s Asian Civil­i­sa­tion Muse­um:

The leaf has to be dried, and the tis­sue has to be removed slow­ly so as to leave the skele­tal mem­brane. The sten­cil of the com­po­si­tion is placed behind the leaf and the gold ink with gum Ara­bic is applied over it. This art of pro­duc­ing cal­lig­ra­phy of a dried leaf, is one that was prac­tised most wide­ly in Ottoman Turkey dur­ing the 19th cen­tu­ry. Dur­ing this peri­od, Ottoman cal­lig­ra­phers were inter­est­ed in pro­duc­ing com­po­si­tions which took the shape of fruits, ani­mals and even inan­i­mate objects like ships and hous­es.

The exam­ples here come from a Twit­ter thread by Bayt Al Fann, an artist col­lec­tive “explor­ing art & cul­ture inspired by Islam­ic tra­di­tion.” There you can find many more elab­o­rate exam­ples and trans­la­tions and descrip­tions of the cal­li­graph­ic script — gen­er­al­ly vers­es from the Qur’an, Hadith prayers, and poet­ry. Learn much more about Islam­ic cal­lig­ra­phy in Schim­mel’s book; in her Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art bul­letin “Islam­ic Cal­lig­ra­phy” with Bar­bara Riv­ol­ta (free here); and in Hoh’s three-part Library of Con­gress series here. And find out how Turk­ish cal­lig­ra­phers like Nick Mer­denyan and Sal­i­ha Aktaş have rein­vent­ed the art in the 21st cen­tu­ry.…

via MetaFil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn Cal­lig­ra­phy from Lloyd Reynolds, the Teacher of Steve Jobs’ Own Famous­ly Inspir­ing Cal­lig­ra­phy Teacher

The Mod­el Book of Cal­lig­ra­phy (1561–1596): A Stun­ning­ly Detailed Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­script Cre­at­ed over Three Decades

Free: Down­load Thou­sands of Ottoman-Era Pho­tographs That Have Been Dig­i­tized and Put Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Why Does This Lady Have a Fly on Her Head?: A Curious Look at a 15th-Century Portrait

in Art, History | April 26th, 2022

In the Nation­al Gallery there hangs a por­trait of an unknown woman, paint­ed by an unknown artist around 1470 some­where in south­west­ern Ger­many. This may sound like an art­work of lit­tle note, but it does boast one high­ly con­spic­u­ous mark of dis­tinc­tion: a house­fly. It’s not that the por­traitist was in such thrall to real­ism that he includ­ed an insect that hap­pened to drop into the sit­ting; at first glance, the fly looks as if it belongs to our real­i­ty, and has alight­ed on the can­vas itself.  Why would a painter, pre­sum­ably com­mis­sioned at the con­sid­er­able expense of the sit­ter’s fam­i­ly, include such a seem­ing­ly bizarre detail? Nation­al Gallery cura­tor Francesca Whitlum-Coop­er offers answers in the video below.

“It’s a joke,” says Whitlum-Coop­er. “And it’s a joke that works on dif­fer­ent lev­els, because on the one hand, the fly has been tricked into think­ing this is a real head­dress,” fooled by the painter’s mas­tery of that most dif­fi­cult col­or for light and shad­ow, white.

“But obvi­ous­ly there’s a dou­ble joke, because we, look­ing at it, think, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s a fly on that paint­ing!’ ” It is our very instinct to shoo the bug away that tells us “we’ve been duped, because actu­al­ly, every­thing here is two-dimen­sion­al. This is just paint. And the skill of the artist is that they’ve been able to take that paint, and brush, and a bit of wood, and con­jure it into some­thing that feels so life­like, we do believe — even just for a sec­ond — that’s a fly sit­ting on that pic­ture.”

Five cen­turies lat­er the joke still works, though it could well be more than a joke. One the­o­ry put forth here and there in the com­ments holds that the fly func­tions as a reminder of imper­ma­nence, of decay, of mor­tal­i­ty. If so, it sug­gests that the sub­ject of this por­trait may already have been dead by the time of its paint­ing, a notion sup­port­ed by the sym­bol­ic weight of the for­get-me-nots in her hand. (One com­menter even argues that the artist is none oth­er than the famed Albrecht Dür­er, and that the woman depict­ed is his late moth­er.) Though it may not rank among the great works of art, this mys­te­ri­ous image nev­er­the­less shares with them the qual­i­ty of mul­ti­va­lence. The fly could be a gag, and it could be a memen­to mori — but why not both?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

19th-Cen­tu­ry Skele­ton Alarm Clock Remind­ed Peo­ple Dai­ly of the Short­ness of Life: An Intro­duc­tion to the Memen­to Mori

A Restored Ver­meer Paint­ing Reveals a Por­trait of a Cupid Hid­den for Over 350 Years

What Made Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus a Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Paint­ing

The Genius of Albrecht Dür­er Revealed in Four Self-Por­traits

What Makes the Mona Lisa a Great Paint­ing: A Deep Dive

Down­load 35,000 Works of Art from the Nation­al Gallery, Includ­ing Mas­ter­pieces by Van Gogh, Gau­guin, Rem­brandt & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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How Thomas Edison & Henry Ford Envisioned a Low-Priced Electric Vehicle in 1914, Almost Changing the Direction of Automobile History

in History, Technology | April 25th, 2022

Few inven­tions have come to define twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry mobil­i­ty as much as the elec­tric car. As report­ed at EVBox by Joseph D. Simp­son and Wes­ley van Bar­lin­gen, the num­ber of elec­tric vehi­cles on the road has explod­ed from “neg­li­gi­ble” in 2010 to “as many as 10 mil­lion” by the end of 2021. Elec­tric vehi­cle man­u­fac­tur­er Tes­la “is the most valu­able auto­mo­tive com­pa­ny on the plan­et,” worth “an esti­mat­ed $1 tril­lion.” That com­pa­ny takes its name from inven­tor and alter­nat­ing-cur­rent pio­neer Niko­la Tes­la, but it was under the influ­ence of Tes­la’s rival Thomas Edi­son that the elec­tric car went through much of its ear­ly evo­lu­tion.

“At about the time Ford Motor Co. was found­ed in 1903, Edi­son had made inroads with bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy and start­ed offer­ing nick­el-iron bat­ter­ies for sev­er­al uses, includ­ing auto­mo­biles,” writes Wired’s Dan Strohl. At the turn of the 20th cen­tu­ry, the vehi­cles on Amer­i­can roads ran on three dif­fer­ent kinds of pow­er: 40 per­cent used steam, almost as many used elec­tric­i­ty, and round 20 per­cent used gaso­line.

Nev­er hes­i­tant to pro­mote his own tech­nolo­gies, Edi­son declared that “elec­tric­i­ty is the thing,” with its lack of “whirring and grind­ing gears with their numer­ous levers to con­fuse,” of “that almost ter­ri­fy­ing uncer­tain throb and whirr of the pow­er­ful com­bus­tion engine,” of a “water-cir­cu­lat­ing sys­tem to get out of order,” of “dan­ger­ous and evil-smelling gaso­line.”

As BBC Future Plan­et’s Alli­son Hirschlag tells it, “Edi­son claimed the nick­el-iron bat­tery was incred­i­bly resilient, and could be charged twice as fast as lead-acid bat­ter­ies.” He even had a deal in place with Ford Motors to pro­duce this pur­port­ed­ly more effi­cient elec­tric vehi­cle.” Alas, “by the time Edi­son had a more refined pro­to­type” — one that could be dri­ven from Scot­land to Lon­don — “elec­tric vehi­cles were on the way out in favor of fos­sil-fuel-pow­ered vehi­cles that could go longer dis­tances before need­ing to refu­el or recharge.” It did­n’t help, as Simp­son and van Bar­lin­gen add, that “after the dis­cov­ery of oil in Texas, gaso­line became cheap and read­i­ly avail­able for many, while elec­tric­i­ty only remained avail­able in cities.” As a result, elec­tric vehi­cles had “almost com­plete­ly dis­ap­peared from the mar­ket” by the mid-nine­teen-thir­ties.

By the mid-twen­ty-thir­ties, how­ev­er, elec­tric vehi­cles will quite pos­si­bly dom­i­nate the mar­ket, and 200 years after their inven­tion at that. “It is said that the first elec­tric vehi­cle was dis­played at an indus­try con­fer­ence in 1835 by a British inven­tor by the name of Robert Ander­son,” write Simp­son and van Bar­lin­gen. The twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry cen­tu­ry saw its devel­op­ment set back by the slow devel­op­ment of bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy, com­bined with the sud­den devel­op­ment of gaso­line-relat­ed tech­nolo­gies and infra­struc­ture. But eco­nom­ic, envi­ron­men­tal, and polit­i­cal fac­tors have con­verged to make it seem as if elec­tric­i­ty is, indeed, the thing after all, and cars pow­ered by it are posi­tioned to come roar­ing — or at least hum­ming — back.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Fly­ing Car Took to the Skies Back in 1949: See the Tay­lor Aero­car in Action

New­ly Unearthed Footage Shows Albert Ein­stein Dri­ving a Fly­ing Car (1931)

The Time­less Beau­ty of the Cit­roën DS, the Car Mythol­o­gized by Roland Barthes (1957)

A Har­row­ing Test Dri­ve of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s 1933 Dymax­ion Car: Art That Is Scary to Ride

The World’s Fastest Solar Car

Behold the First Elec­tric Gui­tar: The 1931 “Fry­ing Pan”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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The History of Birth Control: From Alligator Dung to The Pill

in Gender, Health, History, Politics, Religion | April 25th, 2022

The his­to­ry of birth con­trol is almost as old as the his­to­ry of the wheel.

Pes­saries dat­ing to Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt pro­vide the launch­ing pad for doc­u­men­tar­i­an Lind­say Hol­i­day’s overview of birth con­trol through­out the ages and around the world.

Holiday’s His­to­ry Tea Time series fre­quent­ly delves into women’s his­to­ry, and her pledge to donate a por­tion of the above video’s ad rev­enue to Pathfind­er Inter­na­tional serves as reminder that there are parts of the world where women still lack access to afford­able, effec­tive, and safe means of con­tra­cep­tion.

One goal of the World Health Organization’s End­ing Pre­ventable Mater­nal Mor­tal­i­ty ini­tia­tive is for 65% of women to be able to make informed and empow­ered deci­sions regard­ing sex­u­al rela­tions, con­tra­cep­tive use, and their repro­duc­tive health by 2025.

As Hol­i­day points out, expense, social stig­ma, and reli­gious edicts have impact­ed ease of access to birth con­trol for cen­turies.

The fur­ther back you go, you can be cer­tain that some meth­ods advo­cat­ed by mid­wives and med­i­cine women have been lost to his­to­ry, owing to unrecord­ed oral tra­di­tion and the sen­si­tive nature of the infor­ma­tion.

Hol­i­day still man­ages to truf­fle up a fas­ci­nat­ing array of prac­tices and prod­ucts that were thought — often erro­neous­ly — to ward off unwant­ed preg­nan­cy.

Some that worked and con­tin­ue to work to vary­ing degrees, include bar­ri­er meth­ods, con­doms, and more recent­ly the IUD and The Pill.

Def­i­nite­ly NOT rec­om­mend­ed: with­draw­al, hold­ing your breath dur­ing inter­course, a post-coital sneez­ing reg­i­men, douch­ing with Lysol or Coca-Cola, tox­ic cock­tails of lead, mer­cury or cop­per salt, any­thing involv­ing alli­ga­tor dung, and slug­ging back water that’s been used to wash a corpse.

As for sil­phi­um, an herb that like­ly did have some sort of sper­mi­ci­dal prop­er­ties, we’ll nev­er know for sure. By 1 CE, demand out­stripped sup­ply of this rem­e­dy, even­tu­al­ly wip­ing it off the face of the earth despite increas­ing­ly astro­nom­i­cal prices. Fun fact: sil­phi­um was also used to treat sore throat, snakebite, scor­pi­on stings, mange, gout, quin­sy, epilep­sy, and anal warts

The his­to­ry of birth con­trol can be con­sid­ered a semi-secret part of the his­to­ry of pros­ti­tu­tion, fem­i­nism, the mil­i­tary, obscen­i­ty laws, sex edu­ca­tion and atti­tudes toward pub­lic health.

From Mar­garet Sanger and the 60,000 women exe­cut­ed as witch­es in the 16th and 17th cen­turies, to econ­o­mist Thomas Malthus’ 1798 Essay on the Prin­ci­ple of Pop­u­la­tion and leg­endary adven­tur­er Gia­co­mo Casano­va’s satin rib­bon-trimmed jim­my hat, this episode of His­to­ry Tea Time with Lind­say Hol­i­day touch­es on it all.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Birth Con­trol Hand­book: The Under­ground Stu­dent Pub­li­ca­tion That Let Women Take Con­trol of Their Bod­ies (1968)

I’m Just a Pill: A School­house Rock Clas­sic Gets Reimag­ined to Defend Repro­duc­tive Rights in 2017

The Sto­ry Of Men­stru­a­tion: Watch Walt Disney’s Sex Ed Film from 1946

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A Master List of 1,700 Free Courses From Top Universities: A Lifetime of Learning on One Page

in Online Courses | April 24th, 2022


For the past 15 years, we’ve been busy rum­mag­ing around the inter­net and adding cours­es to an ever-grow­ing list of Free Online Cours­es, which now fea­tures 1,700 cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties. Let’s give you the quick overview: The list lets you down­load audio & video lec­tures from schools like Stan­ford, Yale, MIT, Oxford, Har­vard and many oth­er insti­tu­tions. Gen­er­al­ly, the cours­es can be accessed via YouTube, iTunes or uni­ver­si­ty web sites, and you can lis­ten to the lec­tures any­time, any­where, on your com­put­er or smart phone. We haven’t done a pre­cise cal­cu­la­tion, but there’s about 50,000 hours of free audio & video lec­tures here. Enough to keep you busy for a very long time–something that’s use­ful dur­ing these social­ly dis­tant times.

Right now you’ll find 200 free phi­los­o­phy cours­es, 105 free his­to­ry cours­es, 170 free com­put­er sci­ence cours­es, 85 free physics cours­es and 55 Free Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es in the col­lec­tion, and that’s just begin­ning to scratch the sur­face. You can peruse sec­tions cov­er­ing Astron­o­my, Biol­o­gy, Busi­ness, Chem­istry, Eco­nom­ics, Engi­neer­ing, Math, Polit­i­cal Sci­ence, Psy­chol­o­gy and Reli­gion.

Here are some high­lights from the com­plete list of Free Online Cours­es. We’ve added a few unconventional/vintage cours­es in the mix just to keep things inter­est­ing.

The com­plete list of cours­es can be accessed here: 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. For more enrich­ing mate­r­i­al, see our oth­er col­lec­tions below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Learn 45+ Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More.

200 Online Cer­tifi­cate & Micro­cre­den­tial Pro­grams from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties & Com­pa­nies.

Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

 

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Explore a Big Archive of Vintage Early Comics: 1700–1929

in Archives, Art, Comics/Cartoons, History | April 22nd, 2022

The pop­u­lar­i­ty of graph­ic nov­els (and more than a few extreme­ly lucra­tive super­hero movie fran­chis­es) have con­ferred respectabil­i­ty on comics.

Hand­some reis­sues of such stun­ning ear­ly works as Win­sor McKay’s Lit­tle Nemo in Slum­ber­land, George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, and Frank King’s Walt and Skeez­ix sug­gest that read­ers’ appetite for vin­tage comics extends deep­er and fur­ther back than mere nos­tal­gia for the Sun­day fun­nies of their youth.

Artist Andy Bleck’s Andy’s Ear­ly Comics Archive is an excel­lent resource for those seek­ing to dis­cov­er ear­ly exam­ples of the form that have yet to be reis­sued in a col­lect­ed edi­tion. (Fair warn­ing: reflect­ing the atti­tudes of the time, the col­lec­tion does inevitably con­tains some racist imagery. Such imagery won’t be on dis­play in this post.)

Bleck, the cre­ator of Konky Kru, a beau­ti­ful­ly sim­ple, word­less series, as well as sev­er­al self-pub­lished mini comics, takes a historian’s inter­est in his sub­ject, begin­ning with the William Hog­a­rth engrav­ings A Harlot’s Progress from 1730:

The famous ‘pro­gres­sions’ by Hog­a­rth were not actu­al­ly comics. The images don’t lead into and don’t inter­act with each oth­er. Each shows a dis­tinct, sep­a­rate stage of a longer sto­ry. How­ev­er, because of their great pop­u­lar­i­ty, they estab­lished the very notion of telling enter­tain­ing sto­ries with a series of pic­tures and so became a high­ly influ­en­tial step­ping stone for future devel­op­ments.

He also cites the influ­ence of British polit­i­cal car­toons, Chi­nese wood­cuts, illus­trat­ed fairy tales and nurs­ery rhymes, and Hein­rich Hoff­man­n’s Struwwelpeter, a book that ter­ri­fied chil­dren into behav­ing by depict­ing the mon­strous con­se­quences befalling those who failed to do so.

Iron­i­cal­ly, Franz Joseph Goez’s Lenar­do und Blan­dine, an actu­al graph­ic nov­el­ette from 1783, “prob­a­bly had lit­tle influ­ence:”

 It was too ahead of its time as far as the com­ic struc­ture is con­cerned. In con­tent, it was delight­ful­ly very much of its time, full of out­ra­geous melo­dra­ma.

Things con­tin­ued to evolve in the sec­ond half of the 19th-cen­tu­ry, with pic­ture broad­sheets for chil­dren, such as the ones star­ring Wil­helm Busch’s wild­ly pop­u­lar Max and Moritz. (See an Eng­lish trans­la­tion here.)

Bleck traces the birth of mod­ern comics, whose sto­ry­telling vocab­u­lary con­tin­ues today, to the begin­ning of the 20th cen­tu­ry, with Amer­i­can news­pa­per strips and par­tic­u­lar­ly, the Sun­day fun­nies:

The news­pa­per for­mat was much larg­er and cheap­er, pro­vid­ing a lot more emp­ty space to fill. The audi­ence was less sophis­ti­cat­ed, but (pos­si­bly because of this) more open to a par­tic­u­lar type of exper­i­men­ta­tion, despite the dumb and low­brow humor… these Amer­i­can Sun­day pages became the breed­ing ground for some­thing new. Weird­er, rougher, slap­dashier. Also eas­i­er, for chil­dren, but not child­ish. More pop­u­lar. More … some­thingi­er.

Maybe it was that new type of human being, the urban immi­grant, who was most pre­pared and eager to pay for all this new visu­al goings on.

Andy’s Ear­ly Comics Archive can be searched chrono­log­i­cal­ly, or alpha­bet­i­cal­ly by artist’s name. Enter here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Read The Very First Com­ic Book: The Adven­tures of Oba­di­ah Old­buck (1837)

Down­load Over 22,000 Gold­en & Sil­ver Age Com­ic Books from the Com­ic Book Plus Archive

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

 

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The Sistine Chapel: A $22,000 Art-Book Collection Features Remarkable High-Resolution Views of the Murals of Michelangelo, Botticelli & Other Renaissance Masters

in Art, Books, History, Religion | April 22nd, 2022

Michelan­ge­lo did­n’t want to paint the ceil­ing of the Sis­tine Chapel. Hav­ing con­sid­ered him­self more of a sculp­tor than a painter — and, giv­en his skill with stone, not with­out cause — he felt that tak­ing on such an ambi­tious project could bring him to ruin. But one does not sim­ply turn down a job offer from the Vat­i­can, and espe­cial­ly not when one is among the most respect­ed artists in six­teenth-cen­tu­ry Italy. In the event, Michelan­ge­lo proved equal to the task, or rather, much more than equal: he com­plet­ed his ceil­ing fres­coes in 1512 for Pope Julius II, and 23 years lat­er was com­mis­sioned again by Pope Paul III to paint the Last Judg­ment over the altar.

Long before Michelan­ge­lo touched a brush to the Sis­tine Chapel’s ceil­ing, a team of painters includ­ing San­dro Bot­ti­cel­li, Pietro Perug­i­no, and Pin­turic­chio had already adorned the build­ing’s inte­ri­or with fres­coes depict­ing the lives of Moses and Jesus Christ.

Tak­en togeth­er, the Sis­tine Chapel has long been regard­ed as one of the great­est achieve­ments in West­ern art, if not the great­est of them all. Hence the six mil­lion tourists who vis­it­ed it each year before COVID-19; hence, more recent­ly, the painstak­ing care that has gone into the pro­duc­tion of The Sis­tine Chapel, a three-vol­ume at-book set that brings the build­ing’s Bib­li­cal visions as close as any earth­ly read­er cold hope to see them.


The fruit of a half-decade-long col­lab­o­ra­tion between the Vat­i­can and two pub­lish­ers, Call­away Arts & Enter­tain­ment and Scrip­ta Maneant, The Sis­tine Chapel demand­ed 65 nights of con­sec­u­tive work from its pho­tog­ra­phers, who shot 270,000 high-res­o­lu­tion images. Cap­tur­ing the mas­ter­works on the walls and ceil­ing down to the tex­tures of their paint and brush­strokes neces­si­tat­ed climb­ing up on scaf­fold­ing, just as Michelan­ge­lo him­self famous­ly did to make his con­tri­bu­tions in the first place. Lim­it­ed by the Vat­i­can to a print run of 1,999 copies, the set is now avail­able for pur­chase at Abe­Books, though it will cost you $22,000. In a sense that’s a small price to pay, for as Goethe put it, “with­out hav­ing seen the Sis­tine Chapel one can form no appre­cia­ble idea of what one man is capa­ble of achiev­ing.” Find The Sis­tine Chapel book col­lec­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca and Oth­er Art-Adorned Vat­i­can Spaces

Michelangelo’s David: The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry Behind the Renais­sance Mar­ble Cre­ation

New Video Shows What May Be Michelangelo’s Lost & Now Found Bronze Sculp­tures

Michelangelo’s Hand­writ­ten 16th-Cen­tu­ry Gro­cery List

The Sis­tine Chapel of the Ancients: Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er 8 Miles of Art Paint­ed on Rock Walls in the Ama­zon

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The History of Iron Maiden: A Documentary Streaming Free Online

in Music | April 21st, 2022

From the offi­cial Iron Maid­en YouTube chan­nel comes the two-part doc­u­men­tary The His­to­ry of Iron Maiden. Released in 2004, Part 1: The Ear­ly Days (above) moves from the band’s begin­nings in Lon­don’s East End in 1975, to the Piece of Mind album and tour in 1983. Part 2 (below) was lat­er includ­ed on the Live After Death DVD release in 2008.

The His­to­ry of Iron Maid­en will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot, the Cult Clas­sic Film That Ranks as One of the “Great Rock Doc­u­men­taries” of All Time

1980s Met­al­head Kids Are Alright: Sci­en­tif­ic Study Shows That They Became Well-Adjust­ed Adults

Who Invent­ed Heavy Met­al Music?: A Search for Ori­gins

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100-Year-Old Music Recordings Can Now Be Heard for the First Time, Thanks to New Digital Technology

in History, Music, Technology | April 21st, 2022

If you were lis­ten­ing to record­ed music around the turn of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, you lis­tened to it on cylin­ders. Not that any­one alive today was lis­ten­ing to record­ed music back then, and much of it has since been lost. Invent­ed by Alexan­der Gra­ham Bell (bet­ter known for his work on an even more pop­u­lar device known as the tele­phone), the record­ing cylin­der marked a con­sid­er­able improve­ment on Thomas Edis­on’s ear­li­er tin­foil phono­graph. Nev­er hes­i­tant to cap­i­tal­ize on an inno­va­tion — no mat­ter who did the inno­vat­ing — Edi­son then began mar­ket­ing cylin­ders of his own, soon turn­ing his own name into the for­mat’s most pop­u­lar and rec­og­niz­able brand.

“Edi­son set up coin-oper­at­ed phono­graph machines that would play pre-record­ed wax cylin­ders in train sta­tions, hotel lob­bies, and oth­er pub­lic places through­out the Unit­ed States,” writes Atlas Obscu­ra’s Sarah Durn. They also became the medi­um choice for hob­by­ists. “One of the most famous is Lionel Maple­son,” says Jen­nifer Vanasco in an NPR sto­ry from ear­li­er this month.

“He record­ed his fam­i­ly,” but “he was also the librar­i­an for the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera. And in the ear­ly 1900s, he record­ed dozens of rehearsals and per­for­mances. Lis­ten­ing to his work is the only way you can hear pre-World War I opera singers with a full orches­tra”: Ger­man sopra­no Frie­da Hempel, singing “Evvi­va la Fran­cia!” above.

The “Maple­son Cylin­ders” con­sti­tute just part of the New York Pub­lic Library’s col­lec­tion of about 2,700 record­ings in that for­mat. “Only a small por­tion of those cylin­ders, around 175, have ever been dig­i­tized,” writes Durn. “The vast major­i­ty of the cylin­ders have nev­er even been played in the gen­er­a­tions since the library acquired them.” Most have become too frag­ile to with­stand the nee­dles of tra­di­tion­al play­ers. Enter End­point Audio Labs’ $50,000 Cylin­der and Dictabelt Machine, which uses a com­bi­na­tion of nee­dle and laser to read and dig­i­tize even already-dam­aged cylin­ders with­out harm. Only sev­en of End­point’s machines exist in the world, one of them a recent acqui­si­tion of the NYPL’s, which will now be able to play many of its cylin­ders for the first time in more than a cen­tu­ry.

Some of these cylin­ders are unla­beled, their con­tents unknown. Cura­tor Jes­si­ca Wood, as Velas­co says, is hop­ing to “hear a birth­day par­ty or some­thing that tells us more about the social his­to­ry at the time, even some­one shout­ing their name and explain­ing they’re test­ing the machine, which is a pret­ty com­mon thing to hear on these record­ings.” She knows that the NYPL’s col­lec­tion has “about eight cylin­ders from Por­tu­gal, which may be some of the old­est record­ings ever made in the coun­try,” as well as “five Argen­tin­ian cylin­ders that have pre­served the sound of cen­tu­ry-old tan­go music.” In the event, from the first cylin­der she puts on for NPR’s micro­phone issue famil­iar words: “Hel­lo, my baby. Hel­lo, my hon­ey. Hel­lo, my rag­time gal.” This lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence per­haps felt like some­thing less than time trav­el. But then, were you real­ly to go back to 1899, what song would you be more like­ly to hear?

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed con­tent:

Down­load 10,000 of the First Record­ings of Music Ever Made, Cour­tesy of the UCSB Cylin­der Audio Archive

Opti­cal Scan­ning Tech­nol­o­gy Lets Researchers Recov­er Lost Indige­nous Lan­guages from Old Wax Cylin­der Record­ings

Hear Singers from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera Record Their Voic­es on Tra­di­tion­al Wax Cylin­ders

A Beer Bot­tle Gets Turned Into a 19th Cen­tu­ry Edi­son Cylin­der and Plays Fine Music

400,000+ Sound Record­ings Made Before 1923 Have Entered the Pub­lic Domain

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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